From Cynicism to Joy

In a disappointing world, is it ever possible to walk in joy?

In a world full of hurtful people and sorrowful events, can we escape becoming bitter, disenchanted, and cynical in our old age?

I not only hope so, I know so!

Idealism Run Amok

First, not all disenchantment is bad.

As young adults, we start life full of ideals…and an unspoken perfectionism.

We believe the world ought to be fair and can be made to be fair.

We think social justice (as defined by our ideals) is achievable in our lifetime.

We are convinced it is possible to remove all threats, end all sorrows, and eliminate all conflicts.

If only people were reasonable.

If only they simply followed our ideology’s plans.

If only they took the medicine that our prescription gave them.

And so we create this perfect picture in our minds of how life ought to be–and judge everything and everyone by it.

Necessary Disenchantment

Then we find that such cooperation is never given.

Human beings are fiercely independent, incurably rebellious when coerced or boxed in, and have a genius for gaming the system to their own advantage.

Our idealism crashes headlong into human selfishness, human pride, and human evil.

So we turn up the persuasion, we up the pressure, and we try to compel them into cooperation.

Making their resistance and rebellion worse, and provoking them into enmity and permanent hostility.

Which, of course, provokes us into counter-enmity and counter-hostility.

Revelation of Our Failure

And then we receive a revelation about ourselves:   we are no better than those we harshly denounce and personally blame!

We not only don’t, but we can’t live up to our high principles and idealistic morality.

We, too, are sinners.

We, too, have deeply failed and let others down.

The idealism that once inspired us now torments us with our own imperfections, faults, and wrongs.

From Idealism Into Addiction

It is here that we delve into a secret life of propping ourselves up–where we escape the pain and the hypocrisy, where we numb our sorrows and failures, where find pleasure and release.

And so a secret life begins–often harmlessly enough.

But it always progresses and deepens and eventually owns us so that we live under the prop’s domination, live for the release and relief, and become one more addict of one stripe or another.

Our idealism often leads to idolatry and our activism ends up in addiction.

We now enter the miserable stage, and joy seems impossibly far away from us.

We are in exile in the land of resentment and sourness.

Hitting Bottom

It begins to down on us that we, too, are sinners, that we, too, are unworthy of love and are no better than anyone else.

Our once high-flying ego, bloated with its own self-importance and unforgiving of its own failures, is tyrannizing us and tormenting us.

Even the props and escapes hold no appeal to us–for we have now hit bottom.

It dawns on us that we are hopelessly enslaved and cannot control our way out of this–our lives have become unmanageable and we are powerless.

We begin to look up, expecting to see the angry face of God and lightning bolts in His fists, having mocked His person and abused His name in our scoffing.

Instead we behold a face radiant in love for the lowly, the broken, and the sinner–a Person who died on a cross to atone for our sins and who rose to give spiritually dead people eternal life.

With arms opened wide, we hear a gentle, all-kind invitation to us to come close and be loved at the bottom of our lives.

We either spurn that love and cling to our cynicism, or we entrust ourselves to Him in utter vulnerability and without any controls.

Becoming the Beloved

Then He loves us at the bottom of our lives.

Our idealism that led us into cynicism and enslavement now finds the perfection it was looking for all along, without the burden of self-producing it.

We become His beloved–a small and cherished person He lavishes grace upon and sets free to know Him and find our joy in being His.

Instead of losing our uniqueness and our self, we find we are more truly our selves than we ever have been as the distortions of sin are broken off of us.

In His love we find our created purpose–with the power now to become what we are most truly made to be.

Inside of us we have a secret source of joy–a joy that takes us outside and beyond our miserable, fallen self and plunges us into His limitless excellence and perfections.

And this joy now lives within us, framing all of life’s events and serving as a home we can always return to.

Because for us, always, the best is yet to come.

Because for us, always, we cannot lose in Him.

He will redeem everything–even life’s worst sorrows–and milk them for everything they are worth in order to grow us up and transform us fully when all is said and done.

There is a solution!

Tyranny Control vs. Violence Control, Part 2

Most human beings would vastly prefer to live in a world without any violence.

And most human beings would vastly prefer to live in a world free of all tyranny.

These are both very good quests.

They both offer us security, stability, and peace.

They both involve a tension between freedom and control.

The Flaw in Both Plans

The problem with them is their fulfillment depends on fundamentally altering our basic human nature.

Human beings are prone to being controlling and seeking domination over others.

Human beings are therefore afraid of being controlled and dominated by others.

Human beings are prone to anger and violence.

Human beings are therefore afraid of being victimized by anger and violence.

Human history is littered with planet-wide, sustained, systemic violence, and constant outbreaks of tyranny and despotism from time immemorial.

This is reality because the real world is full of angry, controlling people.

And every last one of us reading this is one of them.

Nobody, anywhere has ever totally or permanently solved the problem of human violence or the problem of human tyranny.

The Environmental Option

And so, because we cannot successfully change human nature, we shift towards changing our environment and look to governments to create that environment.

If we cannot change people from the inside out, many a Utopian has advocated that we try changing people from the outside in.

One kind of Utopia pursues a society without violence, without war, and without guns–aiming to eliminate the means of violence in society and thus the amount of violence.

It’s solution is to enact laws to first limit usage, then reduce numerically, and, if possible one day, eliminate entirely.

It’s goal is peace and, without overstating this, it worships and treasures peace above all else.

Another kind of Utopia pursues a society without tyranny, without surveillance, and without unchecked power.

It aims to deprive the government of all the tools of tyranny and/or arm the citizenry to the point where tyranny would be impractical, too costly, and doomed to always fail.

It’s solution is to have a mass of heavily armed citizenry beyond the control of the government.

It’s goal is liberty and, without overstating this, it worships and treasures liberty above all else.

Notice that each of these competing Utopias and their environmental solutions are in direct opposition.

Notice that each of them block the passionately desired outcome of the other.

Humble Realism

Which leaves us with two options:

The first is humble realism.

It’s where we accept far-from-perfect realities and learn to live with tensions we cannot resolve.

Personal violence will always be with us–that doesn’t mean we need to reward it, fail to anticipate and deter it, or enable it so it’s as easy, frequent, and severe as possible.

Governmental tyranny will always be with us–that doesn’t mean we need to turn a blind eye to it, fail to anticipate and deter it, or enable it by making it as convenient as possible for the government to easily abuse its powers.

Realism means we have checks and balances in place against both urges.

Realism means we settle for the incremental mitigation of abuses and the gradual improvement in conditions–imperfect compromises on incidentals while preserving fundamentals.

Realism means we accept there will always be ever-present human corruption that will erode all gains and require vigilance on our part.

Ordered, peace-enjoying societies will, sooner or later, decay and become more lawless and violent.

Freedom-enjoying societies will, sooner or later, decay first into anarchy, then pendulum into authoritarian tyranny of some sort.

Outside Intervention

But many find the first option unsatisfying and believe we do, in fact, need to change human nature even if it’s beyond us.

The other option is therefore to seek a way from outside humanity to change human nature deep within.

Rather than establishing an earthly, government-enacted Utopia, this would involve a secret movement of quietly changing one person at a time by the hidden action of an Outside Agent.

It would involve gathering new-natured human beings into communities that, together, comprise an entirely new humanity that pictures what’s to come.

It is a new humanity where the Outside Agent’s peace reigns, and where innermost freedom is enjoyed under the Outside Agent’s perfect governance.

It seeks to be a desirable counter-culture, an attractive parallel society, and a stinging rebuke to the existing world order of violence and tyranny.

Can you guess what this is?

The Problem with “Ending Racism”

I would be nice to live in a world where evil could be legislated away, socially shamed away, educated away, and environmentally engineered away.

But, sadly, we don’t live in that world.

This pretend world doesn’t exist and has never existed.

Three Problems

First, we have the problem of unchangeable, evil-controlled, essential human nature.

We’d have to transform all of us utterly, permanently, at our very core for change to happen.

(I wrote a series of blogs awhile back about that particular issue so I won’t repeat myself here.)

Second, we are all under the influence of an angelic arch-being who has made planet earth his base in a cosmic rebellion against the Creator.

This highest ranking evil angel is one who is utterly evil, who lies and murders and wreaks destruction as a sport, and who enjoys toying and tormenting both humanity and every single member of the human race.

Even if we could get our act together, he and his multitudinous minions would pour gasoline on the fire of human anger so it never goes out.

Even if we could change our essential nature, we would never change his–leaving us under his thumb.

Third, we therefore have the problem of the entire earth being under a Satanic super-system.

The Bible calls this over-arching, transnational system “the world”.

The World Super-System

This world system is above it all and contains all political, national, gender, racial, and cultural sub-systems within it.

Curiously, both capitalism and socialism, democracy and dictatorship, liberalism and conservatism, secularism and religiosity, First World and Third World, are all expressions of it–however opposed each sub-system might be to other sub-systems.

It encompasses all nations, all tribes, all peoples, and all tongues.

All national, racial, gender, tribal, ethnic, social, class, and cultural distinctions are contained by it and are fodder for its deadly, enslaving work.

Satan, when confronting Christ, showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth and all their glory, boasting, “They have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I wish.”

The Apostle John, at the end of his first epistle, wrote, “the whole world is in the lap of the wicked one.”

Paul spoke of a “present, evil age” lived under the domination of the “principalities and powers.”

Conflicted Within, Without, and Between

Even a casual reading of human history would catalog an endless series of wars and conflicts.

You’ll notice they are centered around wounded national pride and honor, wounded religious pride and honor, wounded racial pride and honor, wounded tribal pride and honor, wounded ethic pride and honor, and wounded family pride and honor.

Yes, greed and lust play their part in conflicts, but the human pride at the root of the super-system dwarfs them all.

The Apostle John reminds us, “Do not love the world system or the things of the world system. For all that is in the world system, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is of the world.”

Each group sees themselves as the outraged victim and each group therefore gives itself to go to war against and commit outrages against the “the other”.

Then “the other” is aggrieved and outraged, bids their time, and strikes back and does the same in return.

Each group develops an ideology to reinforce and build into an identity while in conflict, which the Bible calls an idolatry.

So even humanity’s religions, to a large degree, lend themselves to being turned into ideologies and identities in the service of a “holy cause” against the bad guys.

Our history is really an endless tit-for-tat, up-and-down conflicts cycling down through the generations.

So the idea that we could end “racial conflict” by eradicating racism is, undeniably, a kind of magical thinking in the face of hard, biting, devouring reality.

A Humble Alternative

I will speak more fully on the following subject the next time.

But let me suggest a more humble goal in the face of the world, the flesh, and the devil, is a temporary mitigation of evils.

It is possible, through God’s grace, to see a gradual increase in the number of God-transformed individuals until a “tipping point” of restraint, forgiveness, humility, and compassionate care is reached in society.

We can’t end or prevent evil.

But we can gum up the works, slow it down, and redeem evils in a way that advances God’s goodness in the face of it.

Here is a most powerful example from Charleston:

http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/27656

 

The Stubborn Problem of Human Nature

Americans are a “can-do” people.

We believe if we try hard enough, work long enough, and are cleaver enough, we can conquer any problem and achieve any goal we set.

We have a bad case of willpower worship.

But there is one thing we cannot change.

There is a condition we cannot cure.

There is a problem we cannot fix.

And that is the problem in the mirror.

I don’t mean body image or physical appearance.

I’m talking about our essential human nature.

It’s who we are when you scrape away all the surface, factor out all the environmental issues, and rule out genetics.

Yes, I’m talking about our soul.

But being utterly unable to change ourselves is a frightening thought.

So we look around for something outside of us to blame, fix, change, and reverse.

Then we’ll be OK.

Or will we?

The Social Conditions Approach

Let’s tack Left for a bit.

If we can equalize conditions, if we can supply enough money for poverty, if we can improve schools, if we can better neighborhoods, then all will be well.

The Russian Communists took this view to the extreme.

If we paid everyone the same, if we ruthlessly eliminated all class distinctions by destroying all classes to the point of exterminating the rich, a totally equal society would break out.

The dictatorship of the Proletariat would then fade away into a perpetual worker’s paradise and the essential goodness of human beings would take over.

“From each according to their ability to each according to their need” forever and ever. Amen.

The problem with all the above is they couldn’t change human nature in the end.

The gulags, genocides, secret police, banishment of all religion, and mass reeducation programs never brought about the worker’s paradise.

Soon, a bureaucratic elite took the place of the old nobility, divided into petty factions, and favored their friends at the expense of their enemies–stultifying all human creativity and initiative.

Instead of creating a nation of super-workers, they created a nation of scared parrots.

They ended up with a society of robotic, soulless conformists who silently seethed with resentment against the busybody, hypocritical few.

The lesson here is even co-ersion could not change human nature–the selfishness, divisiveness, and nastiness inherent and reigning in the center of every person.

The Moralist Approach

Now let’s tack Right.

Let substitute the family for the government and see if it fares any better in changing human nature.

Several examples come to mind.

If the father spanks enough, if the mother nurtures enough, if the children are raised rigorously enough, if good morals are taught, modeled and reinforced consistently enough, then we will have a society of good people when they grow up.

If we homeschool our young, isolate them from all evil, have big families, go to church continually, wear dresses and coats-and-ties, then a new society of the righteous will be born.

If we take young people who have a homosexual bent and subject them to rigorous counseling and a special therapy plan, we can convert these most hopeless cases into happy heterosexuals.

Notice that, much like the Communists, rigor and control are used in the family (rather than the government) to change human nature and, as the scandals prove, keep on failing.

Though what I have just described sounds heretical, it isn’t.

It’s gospel truth.

Only when we come to terms with our powerlessness to change ourselves is salvation possible.

Only when we admit our lives have become unmanageable, and we are enslaved to one thing or another, will we seek to come under new management.

Only when we emotionally own the label, “hopeless sinner”, do we begin to look for a Savior.

The strange thing is God is the ultimate realist about human nature.

He says, “There is none righteous, not even one.”

He also says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

He’s not surprised at all we have utterly failed to change our own nature.

He’s patiently waiting for us to admit the obvious and come to Him.

In the next entries, I will talk about conversion–the intervention of God from the outside that inserts a new nature into us and dethrones the old nature.

There is a solution!